There is a growing backlash against educational technology in classrooms, as I described in my article co-published with The New York Times in March. To explore the topic further, I hosted a Hechinger Report webinar last week on screen time in the early school years. It featured Jill Anderson, a third-grade teacher in New York, and Miriam Kendall, a parent and director of the Illinois-based group Screen Sense Evanston.
After initially embracing electronic devices, Anderson reduced the use of technology in her own classroom. The devices “take away the social element of learning, which I think is so important,” she said. “If we want to play a math game, why not play it with another child and learn how to make eye contact and know how to act when you win or lose? »
She added: “I almost feel this responsibility to intentionally have less technology here to make sure they don’t have too much in general. »
Kendall said she was concerned about the “gamification” of learning – educational apps using reward systems to capture children’s attention. “I think we teach our children’s brains that learning is like a video game,” she said.
We received a huge number of responses from webinar participants: over 700 of you registered! – and I didn’t have a chance to answer all the questions. So I wanted to address some of these questions here:
After Anderson said she noticed that low-income students seem to spend more time in front of a screen than wealthier students, one participant asked if there were any studies showing this to be true. Indeed, some studies have found that this is the case: pre-pandemic study found that low-income children aged 0-8 spent more time in front of screens than middle- or high-income children. A Study 2022 found that children from higher-income families spend less time on screens, with the exception of video chats.
Another participant asked if screen time has replaced play and learning life skills for young children. Studies have shown that screen time is associated with diminished executive function. Other researchers have found that more screen time for toddlers was associated with less time spent playing with other children.
One participant asked if literacy skills decline due to screen time because children are not reading as many booksand another asked if there was any data connected speech problems in young children when using the screen. Literacy rates have been declining for years and, although some researchers suspicious screen time is part of this trend, it is not the only cause. Poor reading instruction And loss of learning time during pandemic among other potential reasons. As for references in speech therapy, therapy and speech delay diagnoses increased during and after the pandemic. A Study 2023 found that children who spent more time in front of a screen at age 1 were more likely to have communication-related delays at ages 2 and 4.
My recent story offers more detail on the use of educational technology in the early grades, and we wrote an article capturing reader reactions – for and against – to the original story.
I also filmed a short video of Anderson’s class and full webinar can be viewed on YouTube.
This story about screen time was produced by The Hechinger Report, an independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Subscribe to the Hechinger newsletter.
The article Screen time in the early years of school: A parent and a teacher speak first in The Hechinger Report.
